Posted on

Finding my flow: how I developed an exam preparation strategy that worked for me —guest post by Katie Clarke

Today, we’re excited to bring you our first guest post written by a current law student! Katie Clarke is a rising 3L at Carolina Law, and Rachel was lucky enough to teach her during Katie’s very first semester at Carolina. Additional biographical details appear below.

Growing up, I excelled in school because I tried harder than most and had figured out the best way to study to perform well on exams: rote memorization. That changed when I started law school. During the first semester of my 1L year, I spent hours each night reading and briefing cases, ensuring I memorized every last detail. To my dismay, I soon learned that those exact details, like whether a car was red or blue, really didn’t matter to the professor. As a very detail-oriented person (in fact, one of my law school professors gave me the superlative of “most detail-oriented”), I struggled to grasp the idea that the details didn’t matter as much as understanding the big picture (i.e., the holding) and the ability to apply the law moving forward.

In October, with midterms around the corner, most students had already begun outlining, or at least familiarizing themselves with outlines provided by 2Ls and 3Ls. I saw classmates with 100+ page outlines and heard about how they had spent hours outlining, but weren’t even halfway through the material. Needless to say, this was overwhelming. Although I appreciate details, I am also aware I can get bogged down by them and was fearful that I would freeze up during an exam if I tried to using a 100+ page outline. This led me to decide that the “traditional” Microsoft Word, bulleted, Times-New-Roman outline would not be for me. Continue reading “Finding my flow: how I developed an exam preparation strategy that worked for me —guest post by Katie Clarke”

Posted on

Being “On” at On-Campus Interviews

This post was co-written by Rachel Gurvich and Sean Marotta. 

As the summer draws to a close, we’re approaching the season of the On-Campus Interview (OCI). Let’s describe the set-up. Typically, on-campus interviews happen after an initial, usually competitive, screening. Students “bid” on a number of firms, and on the basis of their written applications—typically consisting of a cover letter, resume, and transcript, though sometimes also a writing sample and list of references—each firm selects a set number of students to meet with face-to-face.

Now, the mechanics: a law firm sends an interviewer to campus (or, for some schools, a hotel near campus) for a day, where she does a series of twenty-minute interviews that could last a morning, an afternoon, or even all day. Sometimes the firm is interviewing so many people at a single law school that it sends more than one attorney to do separate interview tracks. And sometimes the firms send multiple interviewers who will all be in the room with a single applicant at once. Either way, each candidate gets only twenty minutes to make an impression—and those twenty minutes may come in the middle of a great many other interviews.

Here are ten tips to keep in mind when preparing for and participating in on-campus interviews.  Continue reading “Being “On” at On-Campus Interviews”

Posted on

What’s The Story: Guest Post by Professor Danielle Tully

Today, we’re proud to present this guest post by Professor Danielle Tully (@ldtully), who teaches in Suffolk University’s Legal Practice Program.

Nobody answered our knock on the front door, so we walked around to the side door.[1] If anyone recognizes me, they won’t know me for the white woman I was when I boarded the train.[2] But no doubt Mrs. Coulter would help her look for him, and she was bound to have powerful friends who could get him back from wherever he’d disappeared to.[3]

After reading those sentences, your brain likely conjured a variety of images.[4] In fact, your brain started piecing this story together from the first word—even though the sentences weren’t meant to tell a story at all. That’s because they come from three very different novels.

Why do we do this? According to neuroscientists our brains are wired for stories.  Stories evoke strong responses because they tap into memories. Professor Ruth Anne Robbins has likened a narrative’s impact to a pensieve—the magic bowl Harry Potter encounters that enables him to step inside other people’s memories.[5] In the human brain, memories exist in a complicated nested system that is continuously remaking and rearranging itself. These memories evoke strong emotional responses that impact how we understand new information and the decisions we make about it. When writers, both lawyers and novelists, tell stories, they tap into and interact with this system in their audience.[6]  Continue reading “What’s The Story: Guest Post by Professor Danielle Tully”